"The Dark Backward and Abysm of Time": The Tempest and Memory

Tribble, Evelyn

doi:10.1353/lit.2006.0013

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Since there's nothing particularly "posthuman" about EM-since, if we are cyborgs now, we always have been-there should be room for what I've called a "historical cognitive science" (Sutton 1998(Sutton , 2000(Sutton , 2002a Richardson 2004, p. 23;Tribble 2006) (Tribble 2005), and my own account of the 'arts of memory', the strange techniques inherited from the ancients that were popular in the medieval and Renaissance periods for internalizing elaborate architectures to aid recall and cognitive discipline (Sutton 2000). In each case, historical topics of entirely independent scholarly interest can be given a new twist by the EM framework: conversely, quite specific ideas in that framework are further explicated and illuminated in its applications.…”

Section: Em and Interdisciplinarity: Historical Cognitive Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process

Sutton¹

2010

The Extended Mind

348

275

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1 Exograms, Interdisciplinarity, and the Cognitive life of Things The Extended Mind HypothesisOn the extended mind hypothesis (EM),l many of our cognitive states and processes are hybrids, unevenly distributed across biological and nonbiological realms (Clark 1997;Clark and Chalmers 1998). In certain circumstances, things-artifacts, media, or technologies-can have a cognitive life, with histories often as idiosyncratic as those of the embodied brains with which they couple (Sutton 2002a(Sutton , 2008. The realm of the mental can spread across the physical, social, and cultural environments as well as bodies and brains. My independent aims in this chapter are: first, to describe two compatible but distinct movements or "waves" within the EM literature, arguing for the priority of the second wave (and gesturing briefly toward a third); and, second, to defend and illustrate the interdisciplinary implications of EM as best understood, specifically for historical disciplines, by sketching two case studies.EM, an offshoot of mainstream functionalist information-processing cognitive science, has been focused in particular on our abilities to hook up with what Merlin Donald calls "exograms" or external symbols, by analogy with the brain's memory traces or "engrams" (Donald 1991, pp. 308-333; 2001, pp. 305-315).2 These abilities allow us to create and support cognitive profiles quite unlike those of creatures restricted to the brain's biological memories or engrams alone. Among other typical features, Donald pOints out that exograms last longer than engrams, have greater capacity, are more easily transmissible across media and context, and can be retrieved and manipulated by a greater variety of means (1991, pp. 315-316): so our skilled use of such crafted aids changes both the locus of memory in general and the role of our biological 190 J. Sutton memory within the new larger systems (see also Rowlands 1999, pp. 129-147).As I'll argue, it's important not to overstate the differences between internal and external traces: the version of EM I'm developing here, following in particular in Andy Clark's wake, is aimed precisely at investigating a wide range of possibilities on these and other dimensions of variation. I distinguish two versions or "waves" of EM, differentiated partly by the way these dimensions are characterized. These waves are not ultimately incompatible, but they are distinct strands in the EM literature and within Clark's own work: as we'll see, he acknowledged "a potential tension" between them as long ago as 1998 (Clark 1998, p. 99; see section 4 below). Before introducing the two waves, let me reiterate the key commitment they share, tweaked and applied differently in each case. External symbol systems and other "cognitive artifacts" are not always simply commodities, for the use and profit of the active mind: rather, in certain circumstances, along with the brain and body that interact with them, they are (part of) the mind. For Clark, "it is our basic human nature to annex, exploit and incorporate n...

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Section: Em and Interdisciplinarity: Historical Cognitive Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process

Sutton¹

2010

The Extended Mind

348

275

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“…Thomas Wright laments the incessant proliferation of the 'forms' of memory, which threatens to confuse the whole process of recollection. 21 Whereas in the traditional paradigm of the art of memory adepts could explore the loci by imaginatively walking in systematic and often pre-arranged ways, now the movement of memory shifts from the remembering self to the innumerable forms and items of memory. Actually, early modern authors seem to be particularly puzzled even by the memory images on which the art of memory itself was relying.…”

Section: Capuletmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theatre and Memory: The Body-as-Statue in Early Modern Culture

Perletti

2020

Bodies of Stone in the Media, Visual Culture and the Arts

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“…Clearly, any attempt at accounting for the broad social reception of a work would need to take up not only the abstract issues but also the situated cognition. (For literary study stressing embodiment and cognition, see, for example, Wehrs; for distributed cognition and literature, see Tribble. )…”

Section: The Goals Of Literary Criticism and Theory And Their Relatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Literary Brains: Neuroscience, Criticism, and Theory

Hogan¹

2014

Literature Compass

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The "neurohumanities" are largely traditional fields of humanistic study -prominently including literature and related arts, such as film -that have taken up findings or methods of neuroscience to advance their research. Despite some (perhaps premature) media attention (see, for example, Quart), the body of work in neurohumanities is limited. It is therefore probably too early to undertake a survey of research in neuroscientific literary criticism and theory. However, there is considerable interest among literary scholars in the possibilities for such criticism and theory, and there are many areas of neuroscientific research that have begun to be incorporated into literary study or are likely to do so in the near future. The following essay first overviews some basic principles of neuroscience, selecting aspects of neuroscientific research that are particularly germane to literary study. It then considers the main tasks of literary criticism and theory and some of the ways in which neuroscience bears on those tasks. The essay ends with a brief comment on the relation between literary study that draws on neuroscience and neuroscience that takes literature as its object.In recent years, there has been growing interest in neuroscientific approaches to literary and other forms of humanistic study. To this point, concrete work in neurohumanities has been limited. Thus, Paul Armstrong chides literary researchers -including cognitive literary critics -for their lack of "serious engagement with neurobiology" (xiii). Much of the work that has been done falls into the broad category of what we might call "correlational criticism," which is often the initial phase of a new theoretical approach to literary analysis. In correlational criticism, the critic takes some theory -whether deconstruction or neuroscience -and finds parallels for its elements and principles in literature (e.g., Proust's treatment of memory might be seen as anticipating that of some neuroscientists, as in Lehrer's widely read book). Nonetheless, it seems clear that there are many promising research programs opening up in neurohumanities that go well beyond correlational criticism. These will undoubtedly develop much further in the coming years. The following essay aims to introduce some of these openings.Before going on to discuss the relations between neuroscience and the humanities, however, we need to be familiar with some basic principles of neuroscience. Thus, the first section of the following essay sets out to orient readers with respect to the anatomy and function of the human brain. Such an orientation is necessarily highly selective. I have chosen those aspects of neuroanatomy and cerebral function that bear particularly on the following discussions of literature. The second section addresses specific areas of literary study that currently are benefiting from neuroscience or that promise to do so, illustrating some of these points with examples from Shakespeare. The final section addresses the practical issue of the extent to which lit...

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"The Dark Backward and Abysm of Time": The Tempest and Memory

Cited by 14 publications

References 26 publications

Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process

Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process

Theatre and Memory: The Body-as-Statue in Early Modern Culture

Literary Brains: Neuroscience, Criticism, and Theory

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